By ALEXANDREA
BAILEY
editor@portisabelsouthpadre.
Having outgrown its original location, the South Padre Island Birding, Nature Center & Alligator Sanctuary, SPIBNCAS, hosted its Winter Wildlife Outdoor Expo, WOWE, next door at the Hilton Garden Inn. 2023 is the 27th year that SPIBNCS has put together this complex, educational event for locals, tourists and winter Texans alike. This expo covered a wide range of topics regarding just about everything outdoors, and each session was led by an expert speaker scouted by SPIBNCS.
Along with the sessions, SPIBNCS, with the help of a few local shuttle and boat rental companies, offered tours of some of the local ecosystems, guided by the center’s naturalists. The expo portion at the Hilton occurred from Thursday, Feb. 9, to Saturday, Feb. 11, with the last tour, WOWE Bay Boat Birding Tour Two, having been rescheduled, occurring in the early morning of Sunday, Feb. 12. In total, the center offered eight expeditions, and 27 different speaker sessions.
Thursday, Feb. 9 speakers included SPIBNCS’s Jake Reinbolt with a Gator Talk, Mike Heep with “Native Plants for SPI”,TXDot with “Save the Pelicans”, Curtis Hayungs with “RGV Reef”, Dr. David Hicks with “Natural Reefs of the RGV”, John Yochum with “Butterflies & Dragonflies of the RGV”, David DeLeon with “The Good Old Days Are Today”, and Richard Moore with a showing of the Bahia Grande Documentary.
Reoccurring through the three days of the expo was Jonathan Wood with his “Raptor Project”. Wood has been an annually seen face at WOWE, and so are the live raptors that accompany him. Wood brought owls, including a spectator owl, a barn owl, and a screech owl, as well as an aplomado falcon, a crested caracara and more.
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